Posts Tagged ‘Telstra’

Telstra removes porn from Bigpond site

Last month Telstra was exposed for supplying pornography through its BigPond website over video capable mobile phones. Just a few clicks away from ‘Go Diego Go’ and Telstra’s ‘women at work’ page dedicated to women’s equality in the workplace, users could purchase porn videos such as ‘Dirty Housewives’ and ‘Hot Asians Get Wet.’

A Telstra spokeswoman was sent forth to defend the content, stating the ‘glamour content’ was the ‘mildest in the category.’

We have been hearing from Collective Shout supporters for some time about Telstra’s Bigpond site. One Telstra customer contacted us in 2011 saying that she found it disturbing how every time she accessed news or the internet on her prepaid phone, Girls Gone Wild and Playboy was “generally the first thing” she saw.

Another customer was confronted with ‘Hot babes direct to U’ and ‘Naughty Half Naked girls’ every time she used mobile phone banking:

I just recently swapped my mobile phone provider from Vodafone to Telstra. I didn’t realise going back to Telstra would increase my ability to have ‘Hot new babes direct to U’ and enable me to ‘see naughty girls going wild’. I thought Telstra promoted themselves as being a ‘family sensitive’ business. After all isn’t there a cute young boy travelling around Australia with his dad on the tv ads. I guess the promotion of porn sites on their bigpond website on my mobile phone late at night until about 7am in the morning enables that fun loving caring father to access porn from his mobile phone when he is away from his wife travelling with his son. I know the father and son have been travelling around looking at ‘all things big’. Sounds like the dad might be looking at more than just the Big Pineapple.

Others have shared similar frustrations and were told by Telstra that there was no way to opt out of the porn ads. Complaints to Telstra had fallen on deaf ears.

Until now.

Following negative media and complaints, Telstra has now announced the removal of pornography from their Big Pond Website.

As reported by Ruth Limkin on her website Bread and Justice, Telstra CEO David Thodey had this to say:

“Recently, I received emails from customers about content promoted on our BigPond website. Those customers thought we shouldn’t promote adult-orientated movies or videos that objectify women.

I have to agree. We have therefore decided that we will no longer promote access to adult-orientated content through our websites.

Let me put this decision in context. The content accessible via BigPond is mild compared to what’s available on the Internet. None of it had an ‘R’ rating. In fact, I’m assured you could find more explicit content at your local DVD shop or elsewhere in cyberspace.

However, this is not the real issue! Why, then, have we made this decision?

The simple answer is that promoting content such as this is just not the Telstra thing to do and we cannot support anything that is sexist or that is inconsistent with our values.

We are, in many ways, Australia’s largest family company. We are owned by more than a million Australian families, many of our customers are Australian families and family businesses. And we have – through the Telstra Foundation and our corporate citizenship efforts – dedicated ourselves to promoting Australia’s cultural diversity, including gender diversity, through initiatives such as the Telstra Business Women’s Awards.

Our decision is consistent with our values of respect and diversity

If our customers want to view adult-orientated content on the Internet, they still can. That’s up to them, not us. This decision is not about censorship, but choice and respecting gender equality.”

Good decision Telstra. We look forward to other Telco’s following your lead.

Well done to all who made their voices heard on this issue. You have made a difference.

Let Telstra know what you think of their decision to no longer profit from the bodies of women and girls. You can submit positive feedback on their website here.

Just the latest example of the mainstreaming of pornography

‘The “Telstra Babes” content is just a few clicks away from the “Women at Telstra” recruitment website, which describes the company’s “inclusive working environment” for women and its culture that “celebrates the success of women at every level”’.

This piece by James Frost in The Australian last week provides further evidence of the encroaching of pornography into the mainstream. Our major telecommunications company is now in the porn business, offering and profiting from Playboy and Girls Gone Wild.

If you are a Telstra shareholder why not let the company know that you didn’t buy shares to invest in the company’s porn-for-profit venture? And if you’re a Telstra customer, let the company know that this isn’t your idea of corporate social responsibility. You can contact Telstra here.

Telstra’s soft-porn site under fire

byJames Frost

IN another sign that Telstra is not the boring government-owned phone utility it once was, the company now offers softcore pornography over video-capable mobile phones.

Telstra mobile users can watch videos with titles such as Dirty Housewife and Hot Asian Gets Wet for between $3.50 and $4.95 per viewing.

“We have a range of web pages offering different content for the many niche interest groups that make up our customer base,” a Telstra spokeswoman said.

The “Telstra Babes” content is just a few clicks away from the “Women at Telstra” recruitment website, which describes the company’s “inclusive working environment” for women and its culture that “celebrates the success of women at every level”.

“This is a mainstream communications company,” she said. “When did they make a decision to go down this path? Was it at a corporate level?”

Telstra won’t reveal whether it pays for the content or whether it is paid for referring any of its 12 million mobile users to material produced by Playboy and Girls Gone Wild. The telco said warnings were displayed and that the content was relatively tame.

“We have stringent guidelines pertaining to all content across our sites and in particular, the ‘glamour’ pages, which are among the mildest in the category among industry providers,” the spokeswoman said.

Ms Tankard-Reist rejected that defence and said the companies supplying content to Telstra had disturbing associations.

“Playboy isn’t just your father’s magazine under the bed any more,” she said. “Playboy hosts a range of hardcore, explicit, triple-X content across a range of cable television channels. You couldn’t even print the names of the titles they show.

“The Girls Gone Wild genre is harmful to women and girls and there have been allegations that girls have been made drunk to coerce them into filming sex acts or simulated sex acts for the camera.

“Shareholders would be surprised to know the company is hosting and distributing pornographic content. It’s a significant issue for its reputation.”

‘The foremost authority in Australia cyber safety lays it on the line and challenges parents to find their digital spine.’ – Dr Michael Carr-Gregg

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